


deliver us from allegory

by anstaar



Series: of this and that [5]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, and fitz: generally suspicious character, sci-fi problems, the eighth doctor: now with memories, trix: now and always someone else, when aliens mean something, with cameo appearances of post-eda tardis team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26709151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: a companion of the Doctor faces an unexpected problem when she sits down to write her memoirs
Series: of this and that [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/24643
Kudos: 1





	deliver us from allegory

**Author's Note:**

> my doctor who fic agenda: just casually have believing in aliens be a normal thing on Earth

“Could – oh, not this one!” 

Shana blinks as the book she’d just been presented with vanishes like it’s been coopted into a magic trick. She blames the outbreak of similes on the book’s owner. The man has the look of a magician who’d do a popup trade in bookstores. The dramatic outfit. The hair. The look of innocence betrayed by the sparkle in his eyes. 

It’s been a long night. Shana likes book signings, she can’t imagine ever really getting over the underlying thrill, but that doesn’t stop them from wearing her out. Her hand hurts, she’s hungry and she’s starting to suspect that some prankster is replacing her chair with a less comfortable one every time she stands up. She had thought the end was in sight before this. 

Shana beams, suddenly barely noticing the ache that’s set in after doing her best to smile throughout the signing. 

“Doctor!” 

“Shana!” 

His smile is different, of course, but it still has that same unforgettable warmth. As distant as the memories had sometimes felt, she hadn’t misremembered the kindness and certainty in the world he can grant just by truly seeing someone. The hug is a bit of a surprise, but not an unpleasant one. 

“You remembered me!” This seems to delight him beyond measure. His feelings are infectious, and she makes no effort to fight it off. Though she does try for a look of mock sternness.

“Of course, a new face isn’t enough to throw me off.” A different face, a different accent, a different way of being that went beyond a different coat. He’s not _her_ Doctor, but it’s the same person. In a way, she’s sort of glad. She suspects later she’ll be hit by another wave of loss, but right now, there’s none of the complicated feelings that have accompanied past encounters with a paisley scarf or a certain Scottish accent. None of the bad memories that can hit like musket, but without the warning of a battlefield. 

“Besides, I don’t have any other friends that would try to get me to sign a book that won’t be published for another three years.”

“You weren’t supposed to see that.” He smiles again, too. “You shouldn’t put yourself down. I know a couple of time travelers that are big fans.” 

Shana follows his glance. Pat, the friendly and cheerfully competent assistant that had popped up tonight when Marge couldn’t make it, hasn’t made any effort to move along signee who had clearly failed to follow the request about what should be brought to sign. Instead, she appears to be flirting with a guy that looks like the word ‘sidle’ taken human form. He’s wearing John Lennon sunglasses inside. At night. Maybe not human form. 

“It’s good to see you, Doctor. Thank you.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder. This Doctor appears very comfortable with casual contact, Shana notes. After he’d told her about regeneration, she’d spent quite a few nights trying to imagine what it would be like. She’s pretty sure she still can’t really grasp it, but she can’t help trying to categorize what she sees. 

“I told you I’d expect a signed copy of your book.”

“You could get it, if you had the right book.” She takes a breath. “But that’s why I have to thank you. When you said that – okay, I did think you were just being nice. But it also made me – believe.” 

“Nonsense. I’m never _just_ nice.” He says that just like her Doctor would’ve. She wonders if it’s a conscious, or unconscious, imitation for her sake. Or slipping back into old habits. Or maybe it’s not as different as she keeps imaging. It is nice, though. She hadn’t realized who – what – she’d always been looking for.

“You’re the nicest.” 

The Doctor brushes at his jacket, actually looking embarrassed. It really is something. Shana isn’t sure if the temptation to laugh is from shock or a sign that the shock is wearing off. The image of her Doctor dressed like this keeps floating at the edge of her vision. Well, she had seen some interesting things in the TARDIS wardrobe. 

“Your books really are very good.” Outside his presence, Shana hadn’t been able to explain how deeply his simple sincerity could reach. It can cut right through her usual sarcastic deflections. The Doctor produces her _current_ book from the pocket he’d stored the promise of the future, long fingers flicking through the pages but never making them seem less important. “Though not quite what I expect.”

Oh, yes.

That.

* * *

Becca calls Morwen with the news. It’s 3:30, Christmas Day, less than half an hour after the explosion in the movie theater that would never be fully explained. Becca had slipped away from the confusing questions and extremely vague explanations and unconvincing assurances that no one had been hurt in an attempt to get to Morwen before she could get the news any other way. 

Morwen hadn’t gone to the movie with Shana. By then, she already would’ve admitted that the argument had been stupid. They were both stressed and ended up fighting about traditions instead of talking about what was actually bothering them. A little space and they would’ve gotten over it by dinner.

Becca’s call feels like a glimpse into the frozen world where they’d have never gotten the chance. Even though Morwen had an unnaturally tanned and strangely dressed Shana sitting in view the whole time she thanked Becca and assured her that Morwen was fine, that she’d called on a borrowed cell, wasn’t it lucky that she still memorized some phone numbers. 

Morwen’s thankful for the call. It’s just in time to stop her from accusing Shana of lying, or possibly having had a brief disconnect from reality. Her momentum is broken. Besides, it would feel rather ridiculous after having just lied to their friend in front of her for several minutes. 

Shana understands Morwen’s skepticism. It’s one thing for aliens to exist. It’s another thing for your girlfriend to be sort-of-abducted by a mostly well-meaning one who travels through time and space having adventures that include everything from surviving on hostile planets in other galaxies to fighting movie characters come to life in a movie theater in New England. There are times she has a hard time believing it, and she has several new scars and ten days spent hiding so she wouldn’t run into her past-self and cause some sort of paradox. 

But however skeptical, however much she worried about what had happened to Shana in the no-time-passed that she’d been gone, Morwen is there for Shana. She supports her choice to finally commit to writing as fully as she’d always said she would. They talk about what they’re afraid of. They talk about what they want for the future. Shana knows what it means to hold onto life now, and she’s not going to let herself lose out. She knows what she’s capable of. 

Which is why she didn’t expect to be sitting in her living room, staring dispiritedly at a row of flashcards, just months after she’d grabbed her future with both hands. 

“What’s wrong?” Morwen’s question is a little muffled by her pear, but no less genuine for that. 

Shana sighs, running her hand through her hair, again. “I’m having some… story problems.”

“The sci-fi epic? I thought you had all those notes?” Morwen wipes her hands on her shirt. Which, though Shana doesn’t want to be dramatic, is more horrifying than about fifty percent of the alien monsters she’d run from. Still, it’s a nice move to stop her from getting the flashcards sticky when she comes to look at them. 

“I did. I do. I wrote everything down, just like I said. Turned them into adventures, sometimes even while they were still happening. I could see the whole series I’d write once I was back here.” Shana doesn’t have to say that it helped her hold things together during the times she was afraid she’d never get back. There are other times to talk about her new nightmares. 

“Then what’s the problem?” 

Shana shuffles the cards. She tries to make a cascading bridge, only to have them sliding all over the floor. She’d learned how to whistle, but some tricks still evade her. 

“Well, it’s going to be science fiction.”

Morwen nods, patiently, if a little pointedly. “I’d guessed. With the aliens and advanced machines and dramatic moral pondering on the human condition.” 

“Yeah. Well. It’s just that while it was _happening_ , I just saw what was happening, you know? Alien worlds, things are alien. The choices people make are the choices they make. The universe isn’t providing an overarching theme.” She gives up, holding the collected flashcards up for Morwen to take. “Just – take a look.”

Morwen looks through them carefully, taking her time. Eventually she sits down on the sofa. “Ah. I think I’m starting to see.”

“Right?” Shana had hoped she was wrong, but there’s a greater relief in the understanding. She flops back against Morwen’s knees. 

“It did sound different, when you were just telling me stuff that had happened.” Morwen says, comfortingly. She would probably run a hand through Shana’s hair if she hadn’t just been eating a pear. 

Shana takes the cards back, flipping through them disconsolately. “It _was_ different when it was real people and real alien stuff. It’s only when you look at it as if it’s stuff that I’m making up that it starts to look a bit –”

“Racist?” 

“I was going to say sexist, first.”

Morwen nods. “I definitely see that. That all women society really was violent and backwards and just needed men, huh?”

Shana puts her hands over her face. “ _Didn’t come off like that at the time_.”

“And the one where the revolutionaries are terrible and bloodline monarchy has to be defended at any cost, that one has a woman in power in the revolutionary set. Two women. One of who is evil, the other who… betrays the cause because of… liking the prince?”

Shana just groans into her hands. 

“The weirdly positive take on a eugenics-based society also just has ‘women’ written in the corner.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“But this is the one I thought you meant. Though I see there’s another woman president.”

Shana sits up, turning to see the card Morwen is holding up. “Really? I thought I might be able to salvage that one. If I cut out some of the relationship stuff. Crossing timelines was a headache, but it would be a cool trick to pull off.”

Morwen pauses for a moment. “I remember you told me a bit about it. You left out a few things about the evil aliens.” 

Shana pauses too, trying to remember what she’d written down. “I suppose they felt kind of peripheral to my experience – except when we were stuck in prison – though they’re obviously very important for everyone actually living there. It was pretty depressing. Either the people accepted the aliens, and ended up ultimately controlled by them, or they rejected them, and the world was half-destroyed by bombs.”

“Right. Either the president allowed aliens to settle on the planet, or the other one didn’t. The aliens who needed some place to live because they claimed to be poor refuges. Who then took over everything while claiming to be persecuted and used not having eyes as a reason for taking humans as slaves? And weren’t the humans also just recent settlers on that planet?”

Shana pauses again. “If you put it like that, it has some problems. I thought there could be something about colonialism.” 

“It’s not that I can’t see that. It’s just, wasn’t that the one where the president’s breaking point was when the aliens suggested that maybe not everyone celebrates Christmas?” 

Shana sinks back into her hands. “Everything needs so much more explaining and fleshing out that it just makes me depressed to go back to my journals.”

This time, Morwen does pat her shoulder. Shana is too down to care about dried pear juice. “You could always explain that it all really happened. There are pictures of those cyber-things, it’s not a metaphor about having prosthetics or whatever makes you less human. And didn’t you say you wanted to write some good female villains?” 

“I can’t use any of it, ever,” Shana announces, from where she’s lying on the floor. 

“As long as we’re not being dramatic. You got a lot of writing practice out of it.”

Morwen is probably ready to go on being practical for as long as Shana needs her to be. Shana can’t explain the other half of it. The Doctor’s too much to explain. He had taken her away, taken her into danger and almost death. She knows that Morwen can’t excuse it, even if she doesn’t say anything because she knows he’d been Shana’s friend. So she can’t say that she’ll never be able to explain to the Doctor why she hadn’t written the stories she’d told him she would.

* * *

Shana laughs, hoping it sounds light. 

“Well, when I actually started writing, I realized I didn’t have to use just what we experienced. I can come up with science fiction ideas just inside my own head.”

The Doctor nods, full of understanding. 

“Of course. People can be silly about imagination. You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve been asked whether something actually happened. As if writers need to see something to write about it. You have to wonder.”

Pat’s friend, who had, indeed, sidled over, pushes down his sunglasses enough to glare at the Doctor. Not, Shana notes, revealing any hint of alienness that might require a disguise. “Oi, what _I_ wonder about is people who name drop every three minutes. What was that about ‘young Herbert’?” 

The Doctor looks even more innocent than usual. “As I was saying to _Shana_ , social commentary, even in science fiction, doesn’t require alien planets or heavy-handed allegory.” 

Shana manages not to bite her lip too hard. 

“Yeah. I’ve always felt that it’s important to be careful with allegory.”

**Author's Note:**

> i will walk a long way for a joke whose quality i'm more than willing to question. written purely because I think that Anji isn't into aliens, but it's not like a metaphor or anything. not being into different species can just be a thing if they exist. but outside of that, it feels like a thing. 
> 
> also because flip flop is the worst
> 
> not tagged: galaxy 4, mission to magnus, prison in space (why some stories should stay lost), various appearances of monarchies, cybermen stories (esp tomb of the cybermen), dalek stories (esp thals) and a whole host of other choices that inspired this… mostly fond story
> 
> except flip flop, which has zero fondness


End file.
